


In Another Life

by Luce_cm



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Character Death, Death, F/M, Fluff, Heavy Angst, Past Character Death, Ragnarok, Reincarnation, sprinkled about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:35:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28456929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luce_cm/pseuds/Luce_cm
Summary: Ragnarök has come for all of them, the Seer’s words to Ivar prove right, and he wonders on what the world ending truly means when he has already lost it all.
Relationships: Ivar (Vikings)/Reader, Ivar (Vikings)/You
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	1. In Another Life,

**Author's Note:**

> So, the world ending, right? Charming thing to write about. I just really like the idea of reincarnation and yeah, here goes. The quote is by cynthiago, you can find it here.
> 
> In this universe, the Heathen Army conquered Northumbria and Mercia and it kept raiding for longer than in the show. In this universe, no Freydis. Björn was made King of Kattegat by undirectly, as a result of helping Lagertha defeating Ivar, who took to the Silk Roads with the Reader chracter , and found the Rus and thus, shitshow.

Not long ago he was just like this, sitting before his chariot, covered in blood, and facing an army that hesitated at the sight of him.

But this time, this time is different.

There’s no Viking army to support him, there’s no Ubbe or Hvitserk to fight beside him, there’s no…there’s no victory.

There’s no chariot at his back, only splintered wood.

He remembers the Wise One’s words, so many years ago when he told Ivar of his Fate: _your chariot lies as broken as your legs, a snake has settled in your skull, your eyes betray you._

He hears laughter, or at least it sounds like it in his head. The cackles that left his lips as Christians died before him, the mocking giggle of that Rus as he forced his hand, the warm laugh you breathed by his ear as you promised to marry him.

A cruel twist of Fate, or maybe just his arrogance playing against him, but he realizes now none of it happened in the order the Seer spoke it.

_“There has to be more to it than…this, don’t you think?” You ask, eyes on the horizon before you. Ivar moves closer, pressing a kiss on your bare shoulder and silently demanding your attention returns to him._

_It doesn’t, and it irks him more than he should let it by now._

_But, he gathers, a part of him will always want you, want your attention, your touch, your eyes meeting his. He can’t imagine a day he won’t want to have you in his arms, just like he refuses to imagine the day he can’t._

_You agreed to marry him once a deal with Alfred is struck and the war can pause, he reminds himself of that with a familiar warmth spreading through his chest. You’ll be his wife, only his._

_The memory of your warm laugh as you embraced him and whispered your promises to be bound to him before the Gods and your families -or what was left of them- makes him want to have you all to himself, to feel nothing but you for hours on end._

_But, because you asked a question, and because even the slightest of rejections, even one born out of genuine curiosity for an answer, Ivar knows will make him lash out; he replies,_

_“All that’s left that isn’t ours is Wessex, love.”_

_You shake your head, “I mean…more than these years we have here. More than this life.”_

_“Valhalla?”_

_“Maybe,” You muse, and your eyes return to the horizon. “Maybe there’s more to life than this. Maybe…maybe we get to live again.”_

_“Like those Eastern men say? We…return?” Ivar questions, the beginning of a mocking smile teasing at his lips before he bites it back, aware of the seriousness in your expression._

_You were always one to question everything and nothing. Why an axe curves that way, why Freyja favors cats, why Vikings must be bound to these lands._

_Why the world is so big and life so short._

_You and Björn have that in common, he guesses. Though you don’t have the thirst for discovery his brother does, instead you just look for…transcendence._

_“Maybe we’ll meet in another life.” You seal your promise, your hope, with a kiss against his lips, and smile._

_His eyes stay trained on your inviting lips even as he argues, “But you know where we go when we die.”_

_“Valhalla, Ragnarök, it all may mean something else,” You whisper back, “Things are not as literal as you think they are, Ivar.”_

_“What does Ragnarök mean to you then?”_

_“The end of the world,” You reply without hesitation, a slight waver in your voice, “But the world ends every day for someone different.”_

_It is only then he realizes your eyes are not on the horizon, but on the trails of smoke left by the burning pyres of those lost in the fight._

Ivar can still remember your warmth. You were so…alive, so warm and free and so alike fire.

He spent most of his younger years breathing life to that fire, making you clench your hands into fists and get that adorable little frown with well-placed taunts and jabs.

Gods, you even felt like fire under his fingertips when he touched you, he can still remember how your touch scalded and soothed away years of pain and anger and loss. You kissed him and it felt like the cold that made the bones in his legs ache never existed, you touched him and it felt as if he’d never again know what it was like to be alone.

You’d promise love against his skin in fervent kisses that left their mark even after so many years, and for every time he’d tell you how being loved by you felt like the best kind of wildfire, you’d tell him being loved by him felt like the soothing embrace of ice over a burn, like a relief after a lifetime with bare feet on burning coal.

And he wishes he had believed you.

For so long he thought his eyes to deceive him when it came to you, when it came to the proof of your love and your loyalty. For so long, he wasted so much time fearing you’d leave him, betray him.

Now you haunt him.

_Your eyes are big and filled with tears as you look at him, but he refuses to give away his own weakness, instead gritting his teeth and looking at you with nothing but fury and poison._

_“If I don’t kill you, you’ll…”_

_“I’ll kill you, and I’ll make it painful.” Ivar promises, voice hoarse not because you threaten his life with your sword - the sword_ he _gifted you, back in a time when you were cruel enough to pretend to love him- at his throat, but because he knows only one of you will leave this room alive._

_You shake your head, and your head drops, your back curves with a sob that still tugs at a pathetic and stupid part of his heart._

_“You’ll kill us all,” You whisper, and though your voice trembles, the grip on the sword grows tighter, more certain, “You’ll be the end of our world, if I don’t stop you.”_

_“Then stop me.” He dares, and Gods, he wants your eyes back on his. It is the end, and he realizes what you meant when you said the world ends many times for many people._

_“Don’t make me do this.” You beg, but he doesn’t think you’re talking to him. Maybe Fate, maybe the Gods, he doesn’t know._

_“You’re not strong enough to kill me.” Ivar offers, more softly than he should. But it is true, and you both know it. And when your gaze -finally- returns to his, he sees it written in the tears that stream down your cheeks, in the helpless and furious shine of your eyes._

_“But I am strong enough to defend my people.” You state, resolute, and though you lower your sword with a shaky breath, Ivar still feels the threat of sharp steel at his throat, but for completely different reasons._

_Cold grips at his heart, fear and dread._

_“You will not leave me.” He states, voice as certain as it has ever been, and yet it still tastes of desperation, still feels like the lie a madman tells himself._

_“I know your ways of war, my love. If anyone, I am the only weapon our people have in fighting against you and these Rus.”_

_“I will not let you betray me!” He yells, but you don’t react, you only step closer._

_The sword makes a clanking noise as you drop it that rattles inside his head._

_Your eyes fill with tears, or maybe his do, he doesn’t know anymore._

_Your smile is sad, but it still speaks of days spent with you safe in his arms, of nights when your voice by his ear was the one thing that kept him from breaking, of a life that he thought you’d be able to have._

_His eyes flutter shut when your hand lifts to his face, dainty and delicate fingers tracing the newest of scars. He curses his weakness, and he forces his eyes to open and meet yours, if only because it may be the last time he can._

_Your lips breathe a kiss over his._

_“Only death would stop me.”_

_And with five words and one movement of his hand, his world ends._

Ivar watches as the warriors make way for one of their own. A leader, maybe.

He extends his arms at his sides, even if his ribs keep him from breathing, even if his arms shake, even if he doesn’t see on one eye from the blood that pours from the deep cut on his head. He taunts him, dares him to attack like he did so long ago in a city they have long since lost.

The warrior swirls a sword in his hand, and drops the shield he was holding, eyes set on Ivar. Ivar knows he won’t win.

You did always say he realized his mistakes too late.

You were the only one he ever admitted to any regret, so when the devastating realization of what the war he had brought to his homeland meant for his people and the Gods themselves dawned on him, he had no one to talk to but the wind.

It has been like that for a long time. He doesn’t remember any more how long it has been since…since.

Maybe it is better this way, that no one is there to know how many regrets he carries with him to wherever the Gods will take him. Maybe it is better they think of Sigurd’s death as the cold act of a man that can love nothing, and not the rash action that cost him something he didn’t know he held dear. Maybe it is better they think the war he brought with the Rus at his back is the ruthless planning of a man that would burn it all for a throne, and not the stupid mistake of a king with no kingdom and too much arrogance to see when he was walking into a trap.

Maybe it is better they think your death was the certain and inevitable action of a monster that can’t love anything more than his own ambitions, and not the act of desperation and fear that cost him everything.

The man in front of him steps closer, without fear, without hesitation.

He lost someone. Ivar knows that glint in his eyes. The man wants revenge.

He wouldn’t be the only one. For all the Rus and their games took from him, for all the Saxons and their God have cost him, why should he have allowed any of them to have anything to call their own? No, they deserved to suffer, to feel what it is like to have the world end with a whimper, to know what happens to those who take what is his.

He doesn’t feel any shame -even though he knows you would, you would blink big and sad eyes his way and whisper about mercy and softness and _goodness_ , as if any of those saved you-, and he didn’t feel any then, when he ordered his men to kill the children, to take the wives and hang them for them all to see along the edges of the battlefield; when he led raids and had them burn the villages to ash; when he laughed and laughed until all that was left was raw throat and hoarse sobs as they lost it all, just like he did.

He manages to hook the curved edge of the axe behind the man’s knee, and brings him down to his level, moving quickly and attempting to ignore the pain of broken legs, of cut and bruised body, as he settles over him, letting the axe find a home in the man’s eye.

A scream, pained and guttural, and the man strikes back, trying to move him back but unable to do so.

Ivar feels the piercing and sudden sting of the blade that goes through him, like his did so long ago, to too many people that were undeserving of that fate. But it is with a smile he greets his Fate, his death.

He kills that man, and drops beside him as if their Gods, their wars, stopped mattering, and made them equal. There are no kings, no commanders, no Vikings and no Christians. Only two dead men in a rundown city, and an army that watches in silence.

With gasping and broken breaths, he looks with blind eyes up at the sky, and he knows he will die today.

_Your chariot lies as broken as your legs, a snake has settled in your skull, your eyes betray you._

The Seer was right, he always was. Ragnarök came for them all, their world as they know it will end. And the end isn’t far, both for the golden age of the Vikings and for Ivar.

His eyes always betrayed him; he has learned that. Seeing shadows and betrayals where there was none, seeing tricks and lies where there was only truth. For a long time holding on to the certainty that it hadn’t been _his fault_ , he believed it meant seeing love and loyalty in your eyes when you were only playing with him. He knows now, has known for a while, it meant seeing in the smile you pressed against his lips the life he wanted you both to build, and not the strain of a woman pulled between her love for him and her love for her people.

Ivar believed for so long the snake that settled in his skull was you, with your soft touches and your warmth and your _love_ ; he was blinded with his own hate and fury, so certain in this self-fulfilling prophecy of his that you could never love him, that it was all a trick. Gods, you were right beside him telling him not to trust Oleg, not to turn his back on his -your- people, and he didn’t listen. The snake that settled in his skull cost him all he had left, the one he had loved above anyone else. He made sure to make him suffer before he died, he would fight this endless and already-lost war for a thousand years for a chance to make Oleg pay for it again.

But, at the end, it wasn’t Oleg’s knife piercing your heart, was it?

His body shakes, and he cannot stop it, he cannot control his breathing and Gods, he is _dying_.

He looks up at the sky, the sky that remained the same when you died in his arms with love on your lips and regret in your eyes, the sky that remains the same now as the last of the battles for life as they know it is lost.

And Ivar thinks -hopes, he hopes like he hasn’t hoped for anything in such a long time- that maybe you were right after all. Ragnarök isn’t darkness and chaos for them all, for the world ends each day a different way for everyone. The Gods know his world ended on a cold night years ago, and has ended again every day since.

Maybe Valhalla is nothing but another chance to live again.

He murmurs your name with a ragged breath that leaves his lungs at last, and pleads that if the Gods hear him, they will let him see you again. In another life.


	2. Maybe we meet again,

Ivar’s gaze is focused on his phone, awaiting his brother’s answer to finally know how much longer will it be before he gets to the café, but something makes him lift his gaze, looking out the window.

He sees you looking positively overwhelmed on a street corner, eyes squinting at a sign, trying to read the name of the street.

Ivar doesn’t know what it is that makes him adjust the crutch in his left arm and stand up to approach you. He doesn’t know, but he doesn’t deny the pull, the whisper that if he doesn’t at least learn your name he will regret it.

“Do you need help?” He asks as pleasantly as he is able to, and based by the grateful smile you offer, even if twinged with embarrassment, he isn’t quite the mannerless grump his brothers make him out to be.

“Is it that obvious?” You huff a laugh at yourself, and continue, “I’m trying to find…”

Your eyes lower to your phone, and with an adorable frown in your nose, you give up on whatever it is you must say, and just show him the screen. The name of the university is familiar, but you are very much lost, it seems, for it is almost on the other side of town.

He tells you that, and tries not smiling at the expression on your face. Gods, you are cute.

“You are not from here.” He states, and you shake your head.

“Here on a scholarship, I’m going to be an assistant investigator in…” Your words die again, as you seemingly try to remember the name of the place you are supposed to be at. But you shake yourself out of that soon enough, and offer a smile, “I’m Y/N.”

The name makes something in him react, awaken. For a moment he tries to remember why, to understand, but it feels like trying to run in a dream, in feels strange and hopeless and out of his reach.

Before you can think him too strange, he tells you his name, and desperately tries thinking of something to say in the awkward silence that follows.

He finds himself asking if you have time for a coffee, motioning absently to the shop behind him, and by some turn of his luck, you say yes.

Ivar finds out soon enough that it is incredibly easy to get you to talk. It works for him, he doesn’t always know what to say, and he knows to most people he seems cold.

But you, you are warm and alive and expressive, and soon enough you are moving your hands excitedly, speaking of finally being granted the opportunity to assist in a dig on a ship burial site. Ivar frowns, and interrupts you with a mumble of your name, still not over the strange thrill that goes over him when sounds out the syllables.

“There’s no sea nearby, how w-…”

“A ship burial doesn’t mean one at sea,” You interrupt softly, eyes shining. After a breath, where it seems your smile trembles on your lips, you add, “Things are not as literal as you think they are, Ivar.”

He tries returning the smile, but his lips part and his breath stutters out.

Why does it feel like he’s forgetting something?

He shakes himself out of it, and leans forward on the table, resting his elbows on it and looking into your eyes.

“So, why all this? Why chase a love story all the way to Bække?”

You shrug your shoulders, a smile that Ivar tries not finding devastatingly adorable playing on your lips, “I don’t like secrets.”

“I don’t think they are keeping it particularly from you.”

“Still. I…it’s a story no one else knows, something that can change how we see world.” Your eyes are shining in a sort of wonder, of excitement, he has never seen before.

Still, because he cannot help it, he reminds you, “How we see one man.”

“A man that changed the world,” You argue without hesitation, gesturing with your hands as you continue, “Strip away the atrocity, the cruelty, the…otherworldliness of those who are remembered as monsters, and the tale we tell changes, the _world_ changes.

You place your hand over the worn book he saw you carrying, that when he asked you told it was your favorite copy of historical and archaeological records detailing the last years of the Golden Age for Vikings, your eyes fiery as they meet his,

“All we have to remember him by is the legend, the war stories, the chaos he sowed and the death that followed. Even his grave is one of magic, of superstition.”

“But not this one you are working on.”

“Not this one. _If_ I can prove that she was his wife…” A breathed laugh leaves your lips, and Ivar clings to the sound. You bite your lip before insisting, “I just need her name to be the right one.”

“The right one?”

You shrug your shoulders, moving both hands so they are wrapped around your cup of coffee, though your fingers are anxiously tapping at the plastic covering. “His last breath was a whisper of a name. It may not mean anything, but it’s the one lead I have. He may have been a monster, but…he died with a name on his lips.”

“The name of his wife.”

You correct with a shake of your head, “ _Presumed_ wife, Rus records only speak of a shieldmaiden that was found dead in his room, before he tore the Rus apart from the inside. Sentimentality makes you think he was avenging her. Logic, on the other hand…”

When your words die with a gesture of your hand, Ivar finishes for you,

“Makes you realize he killed her.”

You nod, a twitch of sadness, a shine of grief in your eyes, before you shake your head at yourself with a sigh.

“The night the world ended,” You quote with a smile that trembles on your lips. 

____

If someone were to ask him how life turned out this way, how he got to be here with you and have you love him and let him love you back, Ivar wouldn’t know how to answer.

He’s told you before that maybe it is Fate, that maybe, just _maybe_ , you two were meant to be. Each time he speaks of it, you smile softly, usually shaking your head or kissing him to shut him up, but he sees the tremble in your smile, the curiosity in your gaze, the wondering.

Regardless of how he got here, he for once refuses to overthink this, refuses to let himself be twisted into knots by his own thoughts.

So, because he finds himself missing you -because he wants to, because he can, because he asked you to move in and you said _yes_ \- Ivar goes in search of you.

He finds you on the couch, your eyes closed and breathing deep even if your laptop is still open on the coffee table, expecting you to continue work you probably fell asleep doing.

More than a year you’ve dedicated to this dig of yours, this investigation. More than a year, you’ve A part of him torments him with thoughts that you may look elsewhere -both when it comes to a home and when it comes to him- when it is done, but he tries not dwelling much on it.

He whispers an endearment as he presses a kiss right under your ear, a gesture and softness a year ago he never would have believed himself capable of.

“C’mon, wake up, Princess. I can’t exactly carry you to bed.”

“There’s a…bed right here,” You make a vague gesture to the tiny space you leave for him to apparently sleep in, “And there’s a me, and a you.”

Ivar tries replying with a whisper of your name, but Gods, you have him wrapped around your pinky, and your smile stops whatever he was going to insist with.

With a sigh, he sits on the small space you leave, and discards the crutch on the floor at his side. Trying to move you so he can lay down and have you rest on his chest, he once again meets resistance.

“No, no, no,” You mutter sleepily, and stiffen so he can’t maneuver you. “I’m comfy. You leave me be, Lothbrok.”

Our arms lift weakly, inviting him to lay partially over you with his head on your chest. It is inviting, especially with the promise of your fingers running through his hair.

So, he desists and settles in place, pressing a kiss to the center over your heart and laying his head on your chest, his arms going underneath you and wrapped tightly around you.

Ivar closes his eyes, and he can hear it beating under his ear, can hear its rhythm as if he could know it by memory.

He turns his head, and presses another kiss to the skin over your heart.

What he wouldn’t do for that heartbeat.

____

You wake him in the early morning whispering excitedly about the chance to finally go to the site, and insisting that he has to come with you.

“It’s her.” You whisper, and your smile is fucking blinding. When he apparently dwells too long on the warmth of that smile, you insist with an excited pitter-patter of your feet that he gets up.

He does, and gets in the car with you, around curses about the cold that you giggle at, an annoyed furrow in his brow you kiss away, and grumbles about how far away it is that you soothe away with soft kisses.

You get ahead of him when you walk towards the stones embedded on the ground you said are in the shape of a ship, and Ivar limps behind you as you approach the biggest of the stones.

Your hair flows everywhere in the wind, and your arms are wrapped tightly around yourself to ward off the cold.

“The one thing that made him human is here,” You say, and he watches as your left hand raises as if to press your palm against the old stone, before you stop yourself. “The one proof that he wasn’t a…a monster. Just a man.

You chuckle, but it is bitter, sorrowful, pained; and your gaze lowers to the ground.

“Or…he was, until he killed her.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, to that look in your eyes, to that pressure he feels deep in his chest. So, Ivar grabs on tighter to his crutch and moves closer to the pillar.

“‘ _She will return victorious_ ’.” Ivar reads slowly, feeling a pit of dread at the base of his stomach, like he’s at the edge of a cliff and about to fall, like he knows what it feels to have the world end, like…like he-…

_Those that followed him, those that chose their Viking roots over Oleg’s Christian ways, stay quite a distance away, they know better than to approach._

_Ivar doesn’t know how much time he has spent sitting on this cold grass engraving with shaking hands the words he tries remembering how to spell._

_He knows he’s lost a lot of blood, can feel it, sticky and colder by the minute, pooling underneath him. The one blow that managed to land on him, he wishes he could remember who it was, how it happened._

_He doesn’t remember much of what happened between your lips breathing a last kiss over his and the light dying in Oleg’s eyes as his body surrendered to the torture._

_Even his hand is bleeding, Ivar notices. He remembers faintly of holding on to a small statue when he was told his father died, he remembers the feel of it breaking the skin._

_He could die here, he knows._

_If he doesn’t let them approach him, if he doesn’t let them stop the bleeding, he will die here, tired and worn and_ alone _, under a pool of his own blood before a monument of his worst mistakes._

_He can close his eyes and he can still feel the fathom touch of your hand on his cheek, can still taste the warmth of your smile pressed against his own lips, can still see your gaze filled with love and the promise of forever._

_He can still hear your voice, soft and gentle, the whispered hope that maybe Valhalla is another chance to meet again, that maybe in another life there’s hope for…_ hope _._

_He finishes the last of the letters, and he sways forward, brow resting against cold stone._

_It would be easy, he gathers, to close his eyes and give in to the lull of the memory of your voice, your touch._

_But he refuses to._

_Because he can also feel your hand giving one last caress before you sentence you both to die, can still taste the tears in your lips as you promise only death will stop you against his own, can still see your dead eyes staring back up at him, his knife deep in your heart._

_And so Ivar drops the blooded iron tool before the words he will pray to his very last breath are true:_ She will return victorious.

_He vowed once he would make the world remember him, but the world ended the night he put a knife through your heart. The world -his world- ended, and he finds with cruel clarity that he wants them all to know what it feels._

_He will still be the most famous Viking who has ever lived. He will make them all suffer and pay and_ die _. And they will remember the pain and death and chaos. And he will be a legend, if only one they will whisper in fear for the rest of time, if only the legend of a monster in a man’s skin._

_Ivar crawls away from the boat made of stone, certain many will try to stop him, even more will try to kill him. Certain they will fail._

_They can’t kill him, don’t they know who he is?_

“Are you okay?” Your hand on his back, touch making him realize how quickly his breaths are coming out of him. Bu the can’t-…he can’t get his breathing back under control, he can’t…

He moves back, away from the stone -the monument, the _grave_ \- and his hand doesn’t grip correctly at the crutch on his side. Almost all his life with these things, he’s never failed to use them, they work as an extension of him by now.

And he realizes with dawning horror he wasn’t reaching for the forearm crutch he’s used to, he was expecting to find a rougher one, wooden and metal and…Gods, he can feel the pain of those iron braces, he can feel the pressure of the bones that try to break under unfitting contraptions.

_He cannot keep the scream from leaving his lips when they set the bone back into place, the pressure building from the inside of his leg and the pain threatening to pull him under._

_He feels faintly of your hand on his face, trying to help him feel anything other than pain; hears choppily of your voice by his ear, trying to drown out the beat of his own heart._

_He can’t tell how much time passes, all he knows is that your touch and your voice prove to be the only thing keeping him conscious._

_“I hate those things.” You mutter sometime in the night, and he opens bleary eyes to watch you gritting your teeth at the iron braces that lie somewhere on his left._

_“Necessary.” The word leaves him in a gasp, and is all he can say. Still, the Gods would sooner sew his mouth shut for him to refuse arguing._

_You have the look of wanting to argue, he knows it, he knows that fire like he knows himself; but you say nothing._

_The fire is a different one, but still scalds, when you press your hand over his chest._

He hears you say his name, or…or he thinks he does, and when he looks at you your eyes are the same. And… _how didn’t he know?_

His lips form the shape of your name, but he only rasps out grief, horror, regret, _his_ regret _._

Your expression falls, your eyes fill with tears. He knows that look, that shine of devastation in your eyes.

_You look at him and he sees it written in your eyes, the plea that he doesn’t ask you to make this choice._

_But he cannot go on while the threat of them taking you away from him looms over him. Either he loses you for good now, or they do._

_A part of him dreads your answer, and another is already certain what your choice will be._

_“I’ll stay,” You sentence, and it feels like breathing for the first time in a century, when he fills grateful lungs with air. “Out of love_ for you _, not for the world you want to build.”_

 _But he cannot keep the coldness of his voice, he cannot keep the venom from his lips. Because even if your choice was to stay, he wants to punish you for even_ thinking _about leaving him behind._

_“A world where you happen to be one of the most powerful women. Convenient, isn’t it?”_

_But even as ice cuts and bruises and breaks the skin, your smile is warm._

_“I choose this world not for power, but because I cannot fathom a world without you in it.”_

“You remember.” Is all you whisper. And he recognizes that expression in your face too, all he knew was the feeling behind it once. You have the look of someone whose world just ended.


	3. Maybe death gives up on us.

You haven’t seen him in two weeks. After silently dropping him off at his -yours? Is it still?- apartment, you managed to distract yourself working on the information the stone ship, and the identity of the shieldmaiden that lay buried at the center of it, provided for your university, for your investigation.

But each night, when you close your eyes and you still see the wide and scared eyes of the man you love looking back at you in a mix of disbelief and grief, centuries dawn on you, memories choke you, and you are forced to face the realization Ivar, the quick-witted and endearing, guarded and loving, man you’ve known and loved for almost a year was the same one you saw in your nightmares, his knife in your heart, his teary eyes on yours, his lips whispering promises of love.

And so you go to him. For your sake, but, you dare think, also for his.

When he opens the door, you are stunned into silence. Gods, the eyes are still the same, and for so long you hoped that familiarity to be a trick of Fate, and not…not the reality that his eyes were in fact those of the man in your -her?-memories.

“Why are you here?” Ivar asks, and it strikes you how much like the man in your memories he looks.

He always did, but now…now you see the cruelty, the vitriol, the resentment. They were always there, the anger and the explosiveness are still the same but…but there’s an unhinged side to it all, and it reminds you so much of…of those last days.

You close your eyes tight for a moment, clearing your throat and stepping into the apartment.

“I…wanted to see how…how you’re faring.”

“I’m losing my fucking mind, Princess,” Ivar confesses, and where you think he meant for there to be bite and anger and resentment, all you find is desperation and fear and pain. He shrugs, and his eyes cannot meet yours, “Or I’ve lost it already, I don’t know.”

“You’re not going to lose your mind, Ivar.” You point out, letting out a sigh.

“I think I did, you know,” He confesses, hesitantly, a little lost. He shakes his head, running a hand over loose hair -hair that for some reason you expected to see in braids you once knew by heart-, “After I killed Oleg. I think…I ran out of people to blame and I-…”

You interrupt him, even though a part of you clings to his words, clings to the confession like who holds their hand over a burning flame, begging to feel pain if only to make sense of the world.

“Not _you_. It wasn’t you.”

“Why do I remember it then, hm?” Ivar presses, anger back in his tone, “Why do I remember…remember when I almost drowned on the way to Wessex, when we took Mercia and the Isles and you promised to marry me? Why do I remember when I-…?”

His voice wavers and dies, and Ivar grits his teeth, averting his eyes from yours. It does nothing to hide the agony in his gaze, the tears in his eyes.

You try finding the calm, the certainty, that you’ve held on to ever since you found yourself remembering.

“It is not unheard of, that some people may-…”

“Are you going to start talking about reincarnation, Princess?” He chuckles, but it is watery and broken.

“All I’m saying is that there is proof that cycles repeat. The Ancient Greeks spoke of some souls that given the choice to remain in the Elysian fields, their…Valhalla,” Ivar’s eyes turn to you with sharp focus, and you know he remembers the countless conversations where she wondered on what Valhalla truly meant. Still, you continue, “or return to the living, they chose to return, to live again.”

“That’s why you-…” He takes a deep breath, before he tries finding his voice again. You’ve never seen Ivar so…fragile, with the stance of a man that’s tethered by a thin string onto the safe side of a cliff. He swallows, and meets your eyes again, “That’s why you found me? To prove reincarnation is a thing?”

You shake your head before he is even done asking the question. Because still, past everything, you cannot fathom seeing the fragility in his eyes, the fear that _it was a lie_.

“I didn’t know you were-…I didn’t know you also remembered.”

“But you took me to y-your grave, to that ship. A stone ship, because you died too far from the sea, from o-our seas,” He shakes his head, as if trying to fight back against the memories that flood his mind, that come pouring out of his lips. “Why did you take me there? Did you hope I would remember? Remember what I did, what it cost me?”

“No, I-…”

He gestures with his arm, interrupting you. His voice raises, his temper does as well, the fury and desperation shining clearly in his pale eyes.

“Why, then!? To torment me, for…for what I did?” He huffs a breath, running his hand through his hair, “You did that plenty, you didn’t have to find me I don’t know how many centuries later to torture me for it, Princess.”

You close your eyes tight, and your hands curl into fists, anything to keep you in one piece, anything to keep you from breaking apart at the seams.

“Stop calling me that. You remember, which means you know what it means.”

_“Why do you call me that?”_

_“‘Princess’?”_

_You nod, “My father is an Earl, Ivar. You are the Prince.”_

_“Mhm,” He concedes, and in someone that didn’t know him like you do the way he focuses on spinning the round-handled knife in his finger would be nothing but a nonchalant gesture. But you know better, and so you stay silent. Ivar clears his throat, before he offers, “I could make you a Princess, one day. I-If you wanted.”_

_Your heart lurches in your chest, and the start of a wide and stupid smile spreads on your lips. Leave it to him to bring up the possibility of one day marrying you like this._

_Your hands find the sides of his face, and you bring your forehead to rest against his before you whisper, as softly as you can,_

_“I have no interest in being a Princess, Ivar,” Before his thoughts can get ahead of him, before he can build a wall so high not a thousand years of war would make a dent on them, you press your lips against his for a moment, before whispering, “But I’d love to be your wife.”_

“Do you remember all of it?” Ivar asks, and you frown.

“Why do you ask?”

“Would you have done it?” He asks, and you both pretend to ignore how his voice wavers, “If I hadn’t stopped you, would you have joined Björn against me?”

You know what the real questions are: Was the murder in vain? Was the promise of betrayal nothing but a ruse? Did she die for nothing? Did he have other choice?

You cannot give him the answer, if only because it would mean accepting that he is… _him_ , and that you are… _her._ And you cannot accept that.

That certainty that it is only memories what returns is what has kept you sane for these past weeks.

“She wasn’t-…”

“Not ‘she’,” He corrects, leaning closer. His eyes burn as they meet your own, “ _You_.”

You still shake your head, pretending to be resolute, “It is not proven that anything other than memories rema-…”

“Why do you insist on denying who you are!?”

_Rough fingers trace up and down your spine, and you nestle closer to the warmth, content and sated._

_“I always wonder…” Ivar starts, and you hum to signal you are listening, “Why it is you are always so calm, so…courteous with everyone else. But you are always so easy to grow angry with me.”_

_“You have a talent for getting under my skin,” You confess, pressing a kiss over a new mark that starts showing on his neck, a small little proof that he is yours. After a breath, your lips curve into a mischievous smile, and you drag your teeth over that same, now sensitive, spot. “And I don’t hear you complaining, my love.”_

And you realize with gut-wrenching clarity that never changed. Each time his voice raises so does yours, each time his temper flares so does yours to meet it.

And so you raise your chin and square your shoulders, never missing the weight of a shield at your back as you do now.

You take a breath shaky breath before you reply, voice raised and eyes shining with more than fury, “Because if I’m her, that means you are h-him!”

There’s tears making their way down your cheeks, there’s a tremble in your hands you cannot control, there’s a brittleness to all that makes you _you_ , but there’s steel in your spine, there’s ice in your veins, there’s an anger that has lasted centuries singing in your blood.

And so you approach him with certain strides, furious eyes set on his and breaking your own heart with the familiarity of the situation.

The memories make your head feel less clouded, less cluttered, but they make your heart feel like it will break in two inside your chest.

_The distrusting edge in his eyes, the cruel twist of his mouth, the cold tone of his voice._

_The loud fights where he almost dared you to admit loving him was a lie, wild eyes and demanding voice. The quiet nights where you heard the pleas that you were truly his to keep pressed against your skin in between reverent kisses._

“Means you refused to believe I loved you for years on end!”

Your fist clashes against his chest, but Ivar doesn’t react. It feels like talking to a marble statue, to a distant figure of a past not your own, to a monster you read about in books and saw in your dreams.

 _The smile as he approached Kattegat’s throne after so long, the way he let go of your hand when_ it _came to view._

_The silent demand you make a choice: your people, or him. The refusal to acknowledge it was a choice at all after you decided to stay by his side._

“Means you chose a fucking throne over me!”

Even if your words end in a sob, you still hold on to anger, to grief, to the always bleeding, always stinging wound of betrayal.

_Pleas not to bring the Rus army to Scandinavia falling on deaf ears, promises that the Rus is only the means to an end, arrogance coating his words as he vows he can control Oleg._

“Means you trusted that Rus bastard more than your own wife!”

Your fist tightens even more, and your head bows for a moment, before you lift your gaze to find his again. To make your fury and your pain meet his regret and his mistakes.

_Your head hurting from so many hours crying in silence, holding onto anger and grief and ruin. Your steps those of a woman sentenced for death when you grab your sword and go meet him, meet your Fate._

“Means I…I…I loved you, and you broke my heart!”

And your hand lets go of the tension, just as your body does, and you stand with your back curved under the pain of _centuries._ And now your open palm rests against his chest, right over his heart.

The heart you once thought you owned. The heart that was more than once, in more than one lifetime, your most precious possession.

_There’s tears in his eyes, there’s a sob making its way past parted lips that try to whisper your name._

_But there’s certainty in the sharp movement of the knife, there’s finality in the blade that pierces your heart._

“…It means you killed me, Ivar.”

And the last of your strength, of your anger, of your grief, leave you. It doesn’t feel like defeat, though, it doesn’t feel like being crushed under the weight of Fate.

It feels freeing, like relief after trying to stand under a heavy weight for such a long time. Longer than you remember, probably.

Still, maybe because you were never strong enough to hold on to these memories, to this other life; or maybe because that is what strength is when you taste your own blood in your lips, when you know what it is like to have your heart stopped by the one that owns it; you break.

And your hand on his chest is the one thing keeping you upright, before his free hand settles on your back. Where you would have expected the uncertain hold of trying to soothe you, you find Ivar grips you as tightly as he can, holding you towards him with a mix of gentleness and desperation that speaks of pain and regret and love.

You don’t know how long you cry, and scream, and beg to know why. You don’t know how long he holds you, you don’t know how long you hold him. 

He doesn’t say he is sorry, he doesn’t ask for forgiveness. You only hear him say your name, and three words you can still feel reverberating in your chest.

Says both of those things so many times your name doesn’t sound yours anymore, even though it is, it always has been. Says both of those things for so long his voice breaks and yet with each ‘I love you’ he presses against your skin you hear it louder and louder.

You don’t know when he gently pushed you to sit on the bed, but you did, and you have the strange feeling of being an intruder to the room you and he shared before…before he knew who he was, who you were; before you knew who he was.

A whisper of your name, and you lift your gaze from the comforter you were numbly tracing with shaking fingers.

His eyes are red, and you know yours are too. His breath is shaky, and you know yours is too.

“I am…angry,” You confess, absently tracing his cheek with the back of your fingers, “At you and…and at Fate. A-Aren’t you?”

“Fate brought you back to me,” He whispers, hand trapping yours and pressing a kiss to your wrist, right over your pulse, “I found you again, after all I did, after…what I did to you. I can’t think of this as anything other than…”

“A blessing?” You interrupt, a smirk pulling at your lips, “Awfully _Christian_ of you, Ivar.”

Your tease, weak and burdened by the past as it is, manages to make a smile pull at his lips, to make life return to his eyes, to make hi huff a breath than in another life could have been a chuckle.

You smile too, because you cannot help it. Still, you move back, away from where he sits on the bed, and curl over yourself, your back to the headboard and eyes glued to the digital picture frame that loops over and over pictures of you and Ivar.

His voice startles you from comfortable numbness, “How do you…live with it?”

You frown, “Why would I have the answer?”

He shrugs, “You’ve known for months.”

You can’t keep the bite from your tone when you point out, “I didn’t kill you.”

“You did.” He sentences, voice hoarse and avoiding your gaze. You close your eyes, taking a deep breath, trying to find a center, find clarity, find anything past resentment and pain and anger.

Instead of acknowledging his words, you offer, “The theory is that we all return, but…only a few have memories of those times. I talk to some people that…that have remembered too.”

“Does it help?”

“Haven’t met anyone that was stabbed in the heart by the man they loved, so…no, they don’t help much.”

“Anyone that stabbed the woman they loved in the heart?”

“Surprisingly enough, yes,” You sigh, before swallowing past a dry throat. Even if your voice wavers, you confess, “His eyes are familiar.”

_“You are a very fortunate man to have her, I hope you know that.” The Rus whispers, dark eyes leaving your husband’s to travel to you. He offers a smile, a smile that speaks of sadness and envy and pain, a smile that for once seems honest._

_Ivar keeps calculating eyes on the raven-haired man, and lifts your joined hands to his lips, pressing a deliberate kiss on the inside of our wrist, right over your pulse. Were this any other situation, and it would make a rush of heat travel through you, but now you only watch frozen in your spot as the Viking smiles._

_“I know.”_

_“But you’d do the same thing I did, wouldn’t you? If you found your sweet wife had betrayed you.”_

_Ivar’s answer is immediate, and the fire in his eyes speaks of anger even if his voice is certain, “She would never.”_

_Oleg’s eyes narrow, and the smile he offers is once again shallow, once again a lie, once again poison, “I thought so too. Now my heart is broken, and she is in a crypt.”_

“My mother…” Ivar starts, a broken sort of wonder shining through his words, “Her eyes are familiar.”

The part of you that even after death refused to stop loving him smiles, and grows warm at the knowledge he now recognizes her.

“Frighteningly so.” You concede with a nod.

“Do you think…do you think she knows? That she remembers?”

“She was once one to see beyond what the rest of us can. I think…I think she still is.”

Ivar sighs, “Gods…”

“It…time makes it make more sense, trust me.” You offer, somewhat sheepishly. What can you say to someone that has just remembered a whole life before this one?

Ivar lays down on the bed, hands at his sides and gaze on the ceiling. You remain sitting, your legs folded before you, your arms holding them close to you, as if to keep you safe, together.

After a while, he breaks the silence, “We were happy, weren’t we? Before?”

You don’t ask which before he means, because the answer remains the same. Before, when he was just the son of some lost legend and you were the unruly daughter of an earl, you loved him and he loved you and you were happy.

Before, when he was leader of the greatest of armies and you were a shieldmaiden known across the land, you loved him and he loved you and you were happy.

Before, even with the weight of defeat on your shoulder and the poisonous snake of dark eyes and darker heart at your backs, you loved him and he loved you and you were happy.

And because Fate granted you another chance, or maybe because the Gods are cruel, you had a before after all those ones. Before, when he was just the man you met in a coffeeshop and you were just a student trying to unveil one of the greatest tragedies -or greatest love stories, depending on who you asked-, you loved him and he loved you and you were happy.

And so the answer is a breath on your lips, light and easy and true, “Yes.”

Problem is, you don’t know what you are supposed to do now. How you are supposed to live with all those befores, with all those afters. With all these memories, memories that make you hate him, and love him, and miss him.

A part of you wishes you would have never known of the past, that you would have never recognized him, or his eyes. But you know even in death you’d know him, you know even in another life you’d miss him.

And so you lay down on the bed next to him, and sigh.

“I never thought you’d…I didn’t take you there on purpose.”

Ivar’s smile is bitter, “Because you hoped it wasn’t me.”

“Need I remind you why, my love?” You point out without missing a beat, too late realizing that is not an endearment you usually use. No…that’s hers. Yours, from…before.

“I haven’t heard you call me that in a long time,” He chuckles. A few beats of silence, and Ivar takes a deep breath, “I’ve missed you. I-I know y-…”

“I understand,” You interrupt him, and in a moment of weakness you reach for his hand. He doesn’t hesitate to return the hold, tight and hinting at desperation. Your eyes fall closed, and you can be somewhere else, in another time, in another life, “I’ve missed you too.”

Ivar takes a breath, and lifts your hand to his lips, pressing a -reverent, familiar- kiss over your fingers, “We can do this, Princess. We can…be happy. We got another chance, I…I don’t want to lose you again.”

“You won’t,” You promise, and it comes easy to you. Many times you promised him the same, and each and every time you meant it with all that you are. “I…I love you, Ivar.”

“In the last life and this one?”

You accept his words with closed eyes and a huff of weak laughter, but the promise is still true, “And all the ones after.”

He lifts himself up on one arm, leaning over you. He is so close to you that you can feel his warmth, familiar and enthralling and _his_ , and your heart beats so quickly in your chest you are certain he can feel it.

It feels long-overdue, it feels like nostalgia and familiarity and a past you loved; when you lean up and kiss him. But it also feels like new, it feels like hope and thrill and a future you want to discover.

It is Ivar who breaks the kiss first, yet it is him that comes back and presses his lips to yours again, stealing your breath and your heart and your sanity.

When he pulls back again and his eyes meet yours, you notice they are the same and yet so different. Yet the feeling in your chest, the smile that curves at your lips, the love you see shining in his eyes, they are all the same.

“You and me, Princess, in this life and the next,” He smiles, “We will make death give up on us.”


End file.
